Quantitative Survey

For the quantitative phase of the mixed methods study, I used a cross-sectional survey design, administering an online survey through Qualtrics. My purposes for a cross-sectional design were to have as many participants as possible, and to capture a picture of their expectations and practices at one point in time.

Survey Participants

I conducted the quantitative part of my study at the same northwest public university that was the setting for the qualitative part of my study. For the surveys, I invited students enrolled in courses in a general education department, and faculty

members who taught in that department. I recruited two groups of participants: freshman students, and faculty members who taught freshman students. I recruited both groups through the general education department. For students, I recruited from those who were registered in a required freshman general education course. Because a small number of sophomores, juniors, and seniors take these freshman-required education courses, I also filtered out sophomores, juniors, and seniors before sending out email invitations for the survey. For faculty members, I recruited faculty members who taught freshmen in the general education department.

Content Validity Panel

I wanted to ensure that my survey was investigating what I intended to investigate, or in other words, had validity. Validity in a survey instrument refers to

“how well it measures what it sets out to measure” (Litwin, 1995, p. 33). I chose to examine specifically content validity, which Litwin (1995) defined as “a subjective measure of how appropriate the items seem to a set of reviewers who have some knowledge of the subject matter” (p. 35). To examine content validity, I assembled a panel of four academic professionals and faculty members who had expertise in

information literacy, in working with undergraduate students, or in both of these fields. I sent my survey instruments to the content validity panel for review, and incorporated some minor changes to the survey instrument based on their feedback.

Pilot Study

As an additional preparation for the implementation of the survey, I conducted a pilot study. In order to not draw away potential participants from my full study, I recruited faculty members who taught required courses for sophomores in the same general education department where I conducted qualitative and quantitative phases of my survey. Two faculty members who taught sophomore students consented to take part in the study by taking the faculty member survey themselves, and by providing the link to the student survey to the students in their courses and asking the students to take part in the pilot study. I conducted the pilot survey in October 2015. Forty-nine students took the student survey, and two faculty members took the faculty member survey. I asked students and faculty members for additional comments about the content and

demographics. While students and faculty members made a few comments, none of these comments identified major concerns with the survey instrument.

Data Collection and Analysis: Quantitative Survey

Through the university general education department, I obtained lists of freshman students attending required freshman courses, and faculty members who taught freshman students. I sent an email invitation to students and faculty members on these lists. The email invitation included a short description of my study and the link to the survey. I sent the first email invitation to 1487 students and 40 faculty members on November 17, 2015. I sent a follow-up reminder email to the same lists of students and faculty members on December 1, 2015. I closed the survey to data collection on December 9, 2015, after it had been open for approximately three weeks.

As an incentive to complete the survey, I offered five $10 gift certificates to a local bookstore. After submitting the survey, participants were directed to another, separate online survey where they could enter their email addresses if they desired to be entered into the drawing for a gift certificate. I numbered the responses to the separate online gift certificate survey, and then used an online random number generator to select five participants to receive the gift certificate, and emailed the winning participants the link to the electronic certificate.

My data set included responses from 106 students and 10 faculty members, after I eliminated surveys without any data. Two of the students identified as sophomores;

however, because I filtered all potential participants to make sure that they classified as freshmen by credit hours before sending out the email invitations, I decided to include data from these two students in the analysis.

I conducted two main types of analyses: frequency tables; and contingency tables, using IBM’s Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). I describe these analyses and results in Chapter 4.

Research and Dissertation Timeline

From the first stage of proposal defense to the final stage of dissertation defense, my study took place between March 2015 and June 2016. An outline of the steps and the months and years in which they were completed is shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Research and Dissertation Timeline

Phase Date Action

Proposal March 2015 Defend dissertation proposal

March 2015 Submit IRB proposal

April 2015 Receive IRB approval

Research Phase 1 April-May 2015 Send email invitations for interviews

May-August 2015 Conduct interviews Research Phase 2 June-October 2015 Transcribe interviews

Analyze interview data Develop survey instrument Research Phase 3 November 2015 Send emails with link to

survey

November-December 2015 Collect survey data January-April 2015 Analyze survey data January-May 2016 Write dissertation

June 2016 Defend dissertation

Role of the Researcher

I introduced my study in the first chapter by describing my overlapping roles within academia that led me to become interested in the alignment of faculty expectations and student practices in information literacy. However, it is important to acknowledge that I am not an undergraduate student, and my multiple roles have generally involved teaching and assisting students with information literacy skills. Therefore, I have more experience that helps me to understand the faculty member experience, rather than the student experience. I tried to keep my imbalance towards understanding of the faculty member experience in mind throughout all the stages of my study.

In the interview phase of the study, I saw my role as a researcher as creating meaning with the participants, not just from the participants’ words. Kvale (2007) emphasized the exchange between research and participant in research interviews. He wrote, “The research interview is an inter-view where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee” (p. 1). Kvale’s statement draws attention to the active part that the researcher plays in an interview- not merely asking questions and recording the responses, but taking part in a conversation with the participant. In my student and faculty member interviews, I engaged in conversation with the participants, in addition to asking questions and having the participant answer those questions. For example, one of the student participants was curious about my graduate program, and I engaged in some conversation about the program with him after our interview was finished.

It is important to be aware that the conversation between interviewer and participants has power dynamics that may not be present in a day-to-day conversation.

Kvale (2007) stated that in an interview

A conversation has a structure and purpose determined by one party-the interviewer. It is a professional interaction, which goes beyond the

spontaneous exchange of views as in everyday conversation and becomes a careful questioning and listening approach with the purpose of obtaining thoroughly tested knowledge. (p. 7)

In other words, in an interview, the researcher controls the conversation. I believe that there is an element of choice in how closely they control it, and this could be a delicate balance. In my interviews, I controlled the conversation by asking participants a list of questions from my interview protocol. However, when participants offered additional information that was outside the scope of the question, I tried to find out more about their thoughts, rather than immediately steering the participants back to the interview protocol.

My goal was to encourage participants to express what they thought was important, regarding academic practices (for freshman students) and expectations (for faculty members), even if the conversation sometimes went outside my own expectations for what directions participants’ answers might take, or what topics might be covered.

Data Sources Summary

In Table 2, I show my plan to answer the research questions for my study, using my two data sources: qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys.

Table 2

Research Questions and Data Sources

Research Question Data Source

1. What information literacy practices do faculty members

expect freshman students to use? Interviews and Surveys 2. What information literacy practices do freshman

students use? Interviews and Surveys

3. How do faculty members’ information literacy

expectations and students’ information literacy practices align?

Surveys

4. How do faculty members’ information literacy

expectations and students’ information literacy practices differ?

Surveys

To answer Research Question 1 (What information literacy practices do faculty members expect freshman students to use?) and Research Question 2 (What information literacy practices do freshman students use?) I used data from the qualitative interviews of freshman students and faculty members and data from the quantitative surveys of freshman students and faculty members. To answer Research Questions 3 and 4 (How do faculty members’ information literacy expectations and students’ information literacy practices align/differ?) I primarily used survey data from the surveys of freshman students and faculty members. Again, one of the strengths of mixed methods research is that it draws on multiple sources of data, using both numbers and words to understand the phenomenon it investigates. It was my intention to use both qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey to give me a fuller picture of information literacy practices among students and information literacy expectations among faculty members than I might have if I used only one of these methods. In addition to using the qualitative interviews as a

data source, one of my main reasons for collecting data through interviews was to develop a survey instrument that contained student practices and faculty expectations, as expressed by student and faculty member participants.

In the following chapter, I share the results of my data analysis for the qualitative interviews and the quantitative survey, and discuss how data from both sources helps to answer my research questions.